I was thinking about how you mentioned that your friends mocked religious beliefs one minute and then the next will exhibit the same sort of magical beliefs that they criticized.
It's particularly frustrating to discuss statistics with my Muslim friend because his ideological axioms can be so mind-numbing. He says statistics never matter because ultimately, everything is written and God decides. He'll use the exception and say: "see, it's not always true, you can never predict anything, only God knows!".
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To him, eating correctly or being physically active to keep health problems at bay is pointless because God decides when you die or when you get a disease, so statistics and scientific studies never mean anything.
And you don't need to be a religious persons to have those rigid beliefs. Many people think that for something to be true, it has to be true 100% of the time, no exceptions, which of course barely ever happens.
How many times do I hear people say "height doesn't matter because I've seen couples where the man was shorter!" Well, this is true for 1 in 700 couples and they overlook the fact that we're more likely to notice and remember anomalies, which is why they remember those instances.
"I've seen one couple where the woman was hot and the guy ugly, therefore looks don't matter." Always the same reasoning.